Box of Sharp Objects
by Morbid Muse
Summary: After "Chosen", Dawn is having trouble adjusting to life outside Sunnydale.


Fandom: Buffy  
  
Title: Box of Sharp Objects  
  
E-mail: Amandab9@aol.com  
  
Spoilers: All of the series  
  
Timeline: A week after Chosen  
  
Summary: After "Chosen", Dawn is having trouble adjusting to life outside Sunnydale.  
  
Rated: R  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own them. If I did, seasons six and seven would have gone very differently. I also don't own the lyrics to The Used songs. (Although I do have their CD and did go to see them in the best concert I have ever been to- but that is beside the point.)  
  
Warning: Depression and self mutilation ahead  
  
Feedback: Yes, please!  
  
----  
  
"Found a box of sharp objects What a beautiful day"  
~Box of Sharp Objects  
The Used  
  
"The worst has got the best of you"  
~Greener with the Scenery  
The Used  
  
---- She hasn't done it in over a year.  
  
The feeling of the cool blade pressed up against her forearm is familiar. She hasn't done it in over a year but Dawn knows exactly how the metal will make her skin feel. Knows what her blood will look like as it flows out of a fresh cut.  
  
Dawn can't help the shiver of anticipation.  
  
She knows she'll leave a blood trail everyone will see but none will question. Just like the old days, she thinks with a bitter smile.  
  
There is too much blood tracked into their overstuffed motel room for anyone to even trace this back to her. The new slayers go out almost every night  
  
(without her, of course, since she'll always be Buffy little, helpless sister. At least she usually doesn't have to stay back alone. Xander can almost always be counted on to be left out of the fighting. Sometimes the two of them - or the two of them and Andrew, or the two of them and Giles, or the two of them and insert-name-here - will play Life and Dawn will miss home so much she'll want to cry. She'll even miss Anya offering to trade the game's kids for more money. But Anya is not around, they are not at home, and Xander has to sit to one side so his eye could see the whole board. It seems like the only thing that is the same is that she is still left out of all the fights.)  
  
and the new slayers usually manage to bring back more blood than a butcher shop holds. Dawn figures they are still too high on their new power and strength. But then, how could she understand? She's not a slayer and never will be. She's not the key anymore. She's nothing.  
  
The edge of the blade descends closer to her bare skin.  
  
Her roommates wouldn't understand. Not that she blames them for not understanding. What do they know about what she left behind?  
  
Dawn had seen them. When Sunnydale imploded into a giant hole in the ground she'd watched the explosion but she also watched them. Yes, they were shocked, everyone was at the time. Yes, they were grateful to be alive since so few managed to escape. But she could see even through her numb eyes that they didn't really appreciate it for what was happening before them. The slayers saw it as a town solely of evil being destroyed. They even believed all the innocent being had fled.  
  
Dawn would laugh if she didn't think the action would cause her to cry.  
  
Did they realize what they had turned their back on as their bus headed away from Sunnydale? But how could they? They didn't lose the only house they could ever really call home. They didn't watch as the place that held all her true memories (she had to discount all the ones the Monks falsely installed) dissolved. They held no feelings towards the tower Buffy had leapt off (leapt to her death just to save Dawn), her house (where her mother died on their couch, they held meeting of all kinds, and too much else happened to think about), even Spike's crypt (where hours spent relaxing with the only vampire - and sometimes the only one period - she could feel comfortable with at all) or anywhere else in town.  
  
No, she didn't blame the new slayers for not understanding.  
  
But how could Willow, Xander, Giles, and Buffy just continue on to Cleveland like it was nothing? Didn't they share her feelings? Is it possible that they honestly don't hold as much importance on Sunnydale as she does?  
  
Shouldn't Giles feel as she does for leaving Miss Calendar's grave buried in the pits of Hell? Shouldn't Willow and Xander feel something - anything - when they watched as the only town they ever lived in was swallowed whole? They each lost a serious girlfriend to that town; shouldn't they show more of a reaction? And what about their families who lived in Sunnydale while the two stayed at the Summers' house? Dawn can't remember having anything be said about their families escaping from the town before its end. Could they have been trapped down their too?  
  
Buffy's reaction seems to Dawn to be the strangest though. Dawn had been certain that Buffy would have a stronger emotional response than just a smile and then moving on to a farther destination. After all, that was the place Buffy made her first real friends. That was the place she experienced her first love and most vicious battles. That was where all the Angel drama happened. That was where she had saved the world countless times. Plus, you know, she died twice within only five years and a few miles. In short, that was where Buffy had experienced love, friendship, death, pain, and everything in between. Yet it appeared to Dawn as if Buffy felt no connection to Sunnydale's destruction. How could, only a week after Buffy watched Spike explode with the town Dawn herself had come into existence for, Buffy seem completely focused on their next task without looking back?  
  
Dawn watched as a single tear dropped onto her arm, making it glisten.  
  
Her whole life - skin to tears and blood to memories - existed entirely because of a town that exploded before her and no one mourned it.  
  
Dawn pushed the blade down.  
  
= = =Amanda= = = 


End file.
